Clothes Make The Woman
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Six vignettes about the women of the "Chobits" cast and the choices, sartorial and otherwise, that define them.


Clothes Make The Woman

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Chobits

Copyright: CLAMP

_Freya:_

Mama frowns at our reflections in the mirror, smoothing the ruffles on the dress I picked out.

"It's so … _short,_" she says. "Are you sure this is what you want, darling?"

"Yes, Mama."

It _is_ short, right to the tops of my thighs, exposing my long, white-stockinged legs in a manner that looks innocent and dangerous at once. It's also black, black as a raven's feathers, black as the night in my darkest nightmares. It's the perfect dress.

Maybe in _this,_ He will finally realize I'm not a little girl.

"Ooh, pretty!" Erda gasps, barging into the changing stall as usual, with no sense of privacy. "Can I have the same dress, Mama? Just not in black, black is boring – I know! Pink! May I have this dress in pink, Mama? _Please?_"

Mama raises her hand to her forehead in fond exasperation.

"Well, far be it from me to curb your individuality, girls … but I'll let _you_ explain to Papa."

She really has no idea, does she?

_Shimizu__ Takako:_

The first time Shinbo Hiromu and I met by the swing set in the park, I wore a collared shirt, a blazer, a long skirt and high-heeled shoes. I was the image of a professional, so crisp and neat, I must have looked entirely out of place in a children's playground. No one should have guessed that my shoes pinched, my shirt collar itched, and I felt every bit as lost and displaced as I looked.

But Hiromu saw – and listened. Through his eyes, I re-discovered the self I had lost: not the flawed, worn-out human woman replaced by a beautiful persocom, but vital, joyful, even attractive. I feel a little silly, having eloped with a nineteen-year-old student of mine like something out of a soap opera, but it's all worth it just to see the fire in my Hiromu's eyes.

Now, whenever my shoes hurt after a long day at work, I will never have to fear being locked out. I will always have a soft silk robe, or a comfortable sweater, to come home to.

_Yuzuki:_

It was Minoru-sama's idea to change my hair and dress me as a maid. It happened during the early days of my activation, when he realized just how profoundly we both had failed: he, in creating me in his Onee-sama's image; I, in following my programming. Minoru-sama is an even-tempered young man, but on that occasion, he lost control.

He entered the room abruptly, tossed the uniform and the blue wig across my desk, and ordered me to wear them. "I can't stand it," he said. _"_You're too much like her, and nothing like her at the same time. You're just a Persocom, after all – built to serve. You might as well act like one. From now on, you will perform the same tasks as Father's maids, and address me as Minoru-sama."

My emotions may be only simulated, but the shame, anger and sorrow of that moment felt very real to me. Even though I was programmed with the same impassive demeanor which runs in the Kokobunji family, I might well have shouted back at him. It was only the tears in his eyes that kept me silent.

Minoru-sama is a twelve-year-old boy who has lost his mother, his sister, and his father's attention. It should not be so rare for him to cry.

At least my uniform is becoming, and more modest than those of my unfortunate co-workers. Every time I ask Minoru-sama about them, he shrugs it off as his father's eccentricity, and a way of judging the character of his visitors, "because nothing drops a man's guard like a half-naked woman". He assures me that since they were not programmed with a sense of modesty, their revealing outfits do not trouble them.

Still, sometimes I wonder: what if the maids could choose their own clothing? What if _I_ could? And if Minoru-sama really has come to value me as more than the late Kokobunji Keade-sama's replacement … then why has he not yet given me the chance?

_Oomura Yumi:_

I can't believe it. Ueda-san put my uniform – my _custom-made_ uniform – on Motosuwa-senpai's Persocom - and she looks cuter in it than I did.

I remember when Ueda-san first had it made for me. We'd just started dating, and I teased him a little bit: _"Are you sure it's not too sexy for working in public? It's got a garter belt, for crying out loud!"_ And when he blushed and started to apologize, I assured him I didn't mind. I liked the garter belt. I liked that he chose this way of showing me I was pretty, even though I was never designed for perfect proportions like the Persocoms in the shops. But soon afterwards, I found out about the other Yumi, and I left him rather than be his human consolation prize. And now Chi-chan is wearing my dress, looking impossibly gorgeous, and I just have to get away from here before I do something I'll regret.

Even if Ueda-san isn't dating Chi-chan (I really hope not, for Senpai's sake), the betrayal still hurts. I'm seeing a pattern here. Does he fall for every girl he hires or buys to work at Tirol? Does he give each of them a sexy uniform to make her feel special? Am I as interchangeable as a Persocom to him?

Or was it all just an honest mistake?

I'm in Senpai's apartment. Chi-chan just dropped the dress (making Senpai yelp like a puppy – honestly! This is why I don't date guys my own age), and explained to me that Ueda-san never meant for me to wear it. And Ueda-san, _Hiroyasu,_ is right here, wise and awkward and wonderful and _him_, explaining to me what I should have realized all along.

He didn't love the other Yumi for being a Persocom, or me for being a human lookalike of her. He loves us both because we are both unique.

He loves me for who I am.

He's tripping over his words again, and I'm crying my eyes out all over his clean apron, but neither of us cares – it's still the happiest moment of my life.

_Hibiya Chitose:_

I found my old lab coat the other day, folded underneath a pile of old research notes. Or maybe it was Ichiro's, I'm not sure. It still smelled a bit like the cologne he used to wear, along with plastic and metal.

The days when my husband and I designed Persocoms together feel like centuries ago. I was his partner, his companion. Together we could make dreams come true, even the one dream I had thought was forever denied us, the dream of parenthood. In that coat, I felt like the luckiest woman in the world. No wonder I couldn't bear to look at it when Ichiro died.

I'm a landlady now. I spend my days wrapped in aprons and housedresses, trying, often futilely, to keep my tenants out of mischief. It was a rather dull existence, but a peaceful one, until Erda came back into my life.

The first time I was asked to find clothes for her again, after all these years, I almost cried with happiness. My little girl, damaged but safe, with an owner who went beyond the call of duty in caring for a persocom who, from his perspective, was meant to care for him.

I opened the box of her old dresses, found the one least likely to give poor Motosuwa-san a nosebleed, and showed Erda – Chi – how to put it on, smoothing the brown cotton over her shoulders and tying the ribbon at her collar in a gesture as familiar as breathing. The circumstances were unusual, but in that moment, I felt like every mother in the history of the world, carefully and lovingly dressing her daughter, and I could not have been happier.

I would not exchange that moment for all the lab coats in the world.

_Chi:_

Chi likes clothes. Not only because they are pretty, but because they make Hideki smile. Sometimes they also make Hideki jump back and scream, which Chi also likes, because it is funny. But mostly Chi wears clothes because she has learned that neither humans nor Persocoms should be naked - except when taking baths or being photographed for _okazu_ magazines.

Chi wonders why, if nakedness is not allowed, she was left in the garbage wearing nothing but a long strip of cloth. Chi has no memory of the time before Hideki, but Mama says Chi must have had many masters. The first one was a friend of Mama's and Papa's, to whom Chi was given after Papa died because Mama trusted him to be kind to Chi. Chi was stolen from him by a burglar, and Mama could not find her anywhere, until Hideki brought Chi back to the apartment without knowing what she was.

Chi believes her master before Hideki must not have been kind, and is thankful she cannot remember. The reason Chi does not remember is because he or she activated Chi's reset button and erased her hard drive.

Perhaps the reason Chi was naked is because her previous owner saw her as a thing. Humans and Persocoms wear clothes; things do not. Chi does _not_ like being thought of as a thing.

Hideki does not think so. That is why Chi loves him.

Hideki's favorite piece of clothing for Chi is her pink ruffled dress that is shorter in the front than in the back, even though it still makes him scream when he sees Chi in it. But Chi's own favorites are Hideki's T-shirts. They smell like him, they are easy to work in, and they are more comfortable than anything else Chi owns.

Chi wears clothes to remind herself that she is a person, not a thing. To remind herself that she will never be thrown away again.


End file.
